You and I are in the car.  Oh you precious, you. I’m driving.
We are on a mountain road.  (Why are we on a mountain road?)
We’re excited, the kind of excitement you know will make a memory for your grandchildren.  The road, it winds, sloping ever upward.  We have an unspoken destination.  We are told it is the Apex Theatre.  We know that we are of the chosen tonight.

Our Jaguar hood ornament tilts ever more to the zenith, and we think we are at 45°.
The cruise control kicks in, and I can’t stop it.  We are rocketing.  It’s a straightaway, the uppermost point obscured in an improbable mist.  We ejaculate from the very top, sailing at 160, tumbling into a waterfall.  The surreal scene slants downward, and we regain the road with dripping tires, beaded windows, and uproarious laughter.

It’s all downhill from here, the yellow line glowing on the asphalt ahead.  Once more, there’s a mist.  We’re again on a 45 degree slope, downwards.  The cruise control quits, but my brakes fail.  We enter a tunnel of rushing water, unscathed.  Moses and the Red Sea.

We hit the final whirlpool and are flung.  With broken teeth and bloody faces, we smash open windows, and push out, gurgling to the night sky.  Grabbing, grabbing for anything.
We catch branches, floating logs, and our breath……….and there it is.

Through wind-driven sheets of wave, we see the Apex, in green neon, sporting searchlights, glaring in the fume.

My arm’s broken.  Your shoulder’s not where it should be.  But we don’t care.  We look at each other and smile a bloody smile.

We’re expected.  We may never come back.  The Swimmers come to bring us.  The searchlights move to the vertical, then converge a thousand feet up.  The fifty foot folding doors of oak begin to groan open.  We are held gently and propelled to a landing.

The Sun is inside.

They call us white men. But, at times, I am pink, red, beige, yellow and, lately, a kind of bluish purple in a certain light at a certain time of day.

Recently, two very dark women befriended me, or maybe it was mutual. I do not know. One of them is African and the other from India. The Indian woman works in a store in which I often shop. We have pleasant conversations when time allows, and I’ve noticed that she sometimes makes oblique comments about her skin colour. I asked her once where I would find the suntan lotion, and she said “I wouldn’t know. I don’t need it.” It was all in good fun, but it made me wonder how her life had gone because of her difference from most of us.

The African girl was a recent hire in a coffee shop uptown, and one of the nicest people I have ever met. I could see she was struggling a bit with the new job, and was very eager to please her customers and her boss. When she made a mistake, she would look downcast and would apologize profusely. I felt embarrassed for her, and would look her in the eye and tell her not to mind.
I am hoping that her character will win people over and help her to be more confident in her job.

There is a fast food place where I often stop for coffee. For various reasons, they have a high staff turnover. One day, I noticed a new girl there with a trainee badge on. I think it might have been her first job, because she was very young. At times she seemed at a loss as to what to do next. It was a busy environment, and the minimal staff seemed to have little time to devote to her proper training. She indeed looked almost at the point of tears a couple of times. I felt for her, because I remembered my own first jobs and my feelings of inadequacy. I tried to catch her eye at least once, hoping I could help put a little smile on her face. Recently, I saw her in a new job. She is a customer service rep for a company, has gained a lot of confidence, and seems happy.

For my own colours, I see the pink, I think, as representing moments of embarrassment and inadequacy. The red, perhaps, as unreasoning anger, and the beige denoting periods of humdrum but welcome “normalcy”. The yellow and the purple I save for last, as they are the most uncomplimentary. The moments of cowardice and falsity, like Simon Peter’s thrice denial. The festering ugliness that many of us have. The primal and the animal. But, there are other colours that don’t show very often, at least for me, and they are the saving grace of the aura. Perhaps I can make them shine more brightly, and keep the yellow and purple bruises at bay.

Og was busying himself spooning raw fish guts into his mouth when he heard a strange and alien sound. Not being very bright or very curious, it gave him pause for about five seconds. He had an irritating crotch itch, probably from the little crabbies that frequented this rocky shore. He reached through the fly of his trousers and satisfied himself   scratched until he sighed.  He liked the frontal ventilation, and was proud of these trousers, made out of a broad leafed leathery plant tied together with vines.  Their purpose was not modesty, but protection of the butt from lava rock when sitting down to eat fish guts.

Done his meal, he used a couple of spiny bones to pick his teeth.  There was the noise again.  Actually, two noises.  One was a low booming hum, something like he had heard from a volcano once, but different because it was very close and maintained its pitch.
It was hard to find its source, and, with irritation, he got up and walked aimlessly towards a bushy promontory, as good a direction as any.  The second noise, seeming to interplay or complement the hum, was a high pitched keening, like unto what he was used to hearing from the endless hordes of malicious insects that were a delightful part of his life.  This sound, though, rose and fell in pitch and had many pauses and rhythms.
Of course, Og could not have articulated this, but it served to attract him to see what was beyond the jutting rock and bush.

Alternately swimming and climbing rocks, he pulled himself up to shore on the far side of the bush.  Skinned knees and cut feet were the mother of invention for him, because he had a thought flash through his meaty head that he could easily make something for his feet, and so the first sandals were invented.

The hum was louder now as he crested the last of the sharp rocks.  Og nearly fell down from fright and surprise at what greeted him.  Something big and grey hung motionless in the air.  Something shaped just like the palm-sized flat rocks on the beaches, but so big.  As big, he thought, as many of the surrounding trees laid end to end.  In front of this disk, in the yellow parched grass, stood three figures, covered in something so shiny that Og had trouble making them out.  One held a long spindly thing to his mouth, and seemed to be producing the marvelous noise, which now was attracting him with its pleasant vibrations and pitches.  The other two were gathering dead plants and branches, and commenced piling them up into a small pyramid.  Og thought they must be idiots.  They looked his way, and beckoned him to approach.  Trembling, he came closer.  The one playing the clarinet continued his concert, but soon settled it down to a repetitive drone of five different notes.  Og would come no closer than ten feet.

The other two shiny men began to pick up small chunks of rock, and, holding them over the little pyramid, began to strike them together.  Og smiled.  This was entertainment.  He crept closer.  As they bashed the rocks together, small bits of bright light showered from them and landed on the dead plants in the pile.  As they struck more and more, very tall bright lights sprang suddenly from the plants and deadwood.  The tall lights grew taller and trailed grey and black clouds into the sky.  Og began to back away in fear of this spectacle and because he felt very hot of a sudden.  One of the figures made to take him gently by the arm, and stroked his hand in a gesture of comfort.  They had with them some fish, and he was immediately concerned that his supply might run out.  They laid the fish on a flat hard object and held it over the orange light, now growing in intensity.  Og had not smelled anything like this in his illustrious life.  In a few minutes, he was squatting on his trousers, merrily eating the first food ever cooked on purpose.

The figures, none of whom had spoken, were making as if to leave.  The clarinet player had kept up his b flat drone throughout the ceremony, and it rang in Og’s head, as entrenched as the smell and taste of this wonderful meal.  The fire had reached great proportions, and, as a last gesture of teaching, one of the figures picked a burning branch from it and carried it over to a loose one that was laying on the ground.  Og saw that the bright lights and marvelous heat were transferred to the other branch, and now there were two burning!  He was overcome.  He sank to his knees, and bowed prostrate, kissing the hallowed ground.

His three mentors bowed in return, then turned and ascended into the grey ship.

The enlightened Og had many visions as he finished the fish and cooked some more.
Agh and Org would have to hear of this.  They would set themselves up as kings in the land.  They would utter those five magic notes.  They would be keepers of the flame, and givers of roast fish.

And so, satisfied, happy, and with a full tummy, Og drifted off to sleep.  He would make his sandals in the morning.  Twilight was bleeding to dark.  Twinkling stars appeared, one by one.  And, one by one, the last of the flames and embers went dark to the sound of sonorous snoring.

Here he comes,
walking with that peg-legged gait
knobby knees bending the wrong way

no cane for him, though
not for this old campaigner

chin juts out
hawk nose
eyes of black marble
challenge all comers

amuses the young toughs
with their trashy tattoos

he has but one, and it’s purple

he has felt, and he has seen
infernal abominations of body and soul

and so, this rheumatic incorrectness,
this maladjusted frame
will stop him not

on he lumbers
to whom will he speak?

Wifey will not like this one, but…I don’t show her my blog anyway.

We’ve lived in our current house for almost ten years.  When we moved in, we brought quite a few boxes and totes full of “miscellaneous” stuff that got put into “temporary storage” in the crawlspace, cellar, etc.  It’s a fairly roomy house, with four bedrooms, and, at the time, our kids still lived at home.

My wife’s a packrat by nature, and, unfortunately, so were the kids.  I am not saying that none of the stuff is mine, but, proportionately, it’s about 85 percent theirs and 15 percent mine.

As mentioned, there is a crawlspace (fairly large), an unfinished basement/ laundry room, and also a bedroom-sized chamber that houses the sump pump and has a concrete floor.  Suffice it to say that the crawlspace is full, from floor to ceiling, the sump pump room is about 2/3 to 3/4 full, and the laundry room is about a third full.  We had to leave room for the washer and dryer.  In addition, on the main living level, there is a spare bedroom that is half full of piled up stuff.  I am looking at it right now, ’cause that’s where my desktop is located.  Don’t even get me started on the closets, which are almost unrecognizable.  Almost everything but clothes.  There’s a triple dresser that has no clothes in it, and is stuffed with yarn and other miscellaneous bric-a-brac.

We have had many arguments over this in the past.  My point of view is that if you have lived in a house for ten years and have never opened these boxes, then you don’t need them.  That includes anything that might be “Mine”.

I’ve tried to take a reasonable approach to the clutter by offering a compromise.  I volunteered to bring one box per week upstairs if we could just sort through it and see what could go to a garage sale, or be dumped.  I estimate that would take approximately two years.  No deal.  Don’t touch my stuff.  I have plans for it….I’m going to use it….etc. etc.
I have sometimes gotten a little nasty and said that I didn’t want to live like this any more.  No effect.  Just coldness and silence for a day or two.

It’s just the two of us here now.  Whatever fortune we have amassed is tied up in this house, which we could sell and downsize.  Both of us have worked between 40 and 50 years, and have never taken what I would call a nice long holiday.  I’m retired, and my wife is still working.  She vows to complete 30 years with her company.  Eighteen months to go.  No shame there.

Today, I took a very daring step.  I cleaned out EVERYTHING from the crawlspace and piled it in the downstairs living room for quick and easy access and sorting.  When she comes home tonight there are likely to be a few unpleasant words.  But, I am tired.  Just tired of seeing the rest of our lives stretched out in a straight predictable line amongst all this stuff, sitting and looking at each other every night while watching the boob tube.  Time for a change.  Time to lighten the load.  Time to take a holiday.  Time for her to retire too.

After spending last Saturday in hospital, it was a bit of a chore to accomplish what I did today.  Blood pressure and heartrate are up as I write this, and they’ll likely peak again tonight.

But I am tired.

to be continued……